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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29111106">Can I Be Close To You</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/emquin/pseuds/emquin'>emquin</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>9-1-1 reaction fics [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>9-1-1 (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Compliant, Coda, Gen, M/M, Mostly Canon Compliant, Pre-Relationship, Therapy, introspective, pre-Buddie, spoilers for 4.01 and 4.02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 03:55:18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,249</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29111106</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/emquin/pseuds/emquin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Buck doesn't have a "covid crush", which doesn't mean he isn't hiding something. A look inside Buck's head during 4.01 and 4.02.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Evan "Buck" Buckey/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV), Evan "Buck" Buckley &amp; Eddie Diaz</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>9-1-1 reaction fics [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2140332</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>153</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Can I Be Close To You</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Look at me coming back with fic after I said I wasn't going to write anymore fic. Well, at least I'm keeping it short. Title from Bloom by The Paper Kites. Enjoy.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The one thing that Buck was grateful for was that Chimney wasn’t teasing him about his “covid crush” outside of the apartment. It was something he only ever brought up when Maddie called or whenever Buck made the mistake of being too loud or using his phone or laptop outside of his bedroom when Chim was around. Chimney of course also noticed whenever Buck got alerts or calls on his phone that had him rushing away. Buck didn’t really care about the teasing. He did care that no one find out why he was being so secretive. It was just easier to be teased about something that wasn’t true, than to be teased for what was true. </p><p>The problem was that they were in the middle of a global crisis. A pandemic the likes of which hadn’t been seen for about a hundred years. It was a lot. In March when everything started to go wrong it had been easy to convince himself and everyone else that it would be over fast. That lockdown would work and in a few weeks or a few months everything would go back to normal. Hen and Bobby had been the firsts to question that logic because they only expected things to get worse. Buck really hated when they were right. Of course, nothing was normal anymore. </p><p>Hen was the one to bring up concerns about them doing their jobs during the pandemic and bringing the virus home to their families. Between all her work to put her in the path of becoming a doctor, and being an amazing paramedic to boot, Hen was the first to start pushing them on the road to taking extra caution. Her concern for her family and for the families of the others was real and unfortunately necessary. </p><p>“I don’t want to stop working. I want to help people and we are more important than ever right now,” Hen had put it into words back then. It was everything they were all feeling. </p><p>Buck had lost count of the number of calls that made them practically just collectors of the dead or dying. Not just that but they all knew first responders that had been personally affected by Covid-19 and it wasn’t just them but their families too. Buck was the only one with no one back at his apartment waiting for him. That’s what gave him the idea. </p><p>“You can come stay with me if that makes you feel better,” he offered. </p><p>Hen hadn’t hesitated for long. She and Karen had had a long conversation about it and before Buck knew it he had Hen and then Chimney living with him. It was nice. It made it easier to bury all the anxiety and worry that had been clawing at him with every article or video or news report that he consumed. His living room had been taken over by an aerobed for Hen while Chim took the sofa. </p><p>Eddie showed up a week after Hen and Chim with a sleeping bag under his arm. </p><p>“I have Carla staying with Christopher. It seemed — it’s for the better, you know? Can I — is there room for one more?” </p><p>In reality, Buck’s apartment wasn’t all that big, but Buck wasn’t going to turn away his best friend. So, Buck just welcomed him in. And for a while, despite everything going on in the world, things were okay. Buck wasn’t freaking out with every new report on the rise in cases and the rise in the dead and how the curve wasn’t flattening and yet the intrusive thoughts nevertheless showed up in his head and late at night when everyone else was sleeping his phone was right there with more information and facts and figures that made it hard to imagine that the world would ever be set to rights. </p><p>Eddie was the first to notice that Buck wasn’t getting a lot of sleep. It became a whole thing with Eddie and Hen and Chim feeling like they were being imposing and Buck not being able to voice that it wasn’t them, but everything else. Somehow, he managed to convince them that they weren’t in his way. </p><p>Buck had tried to reach out to Frank, but he was overwhelmed with clients and all of them of the first responder persuasion. Buck had felt weird asking the department to help him find someone else to talk to and it was only partially to do with the time he slept with his therapist and certainly more to do with how Buck knew other first responders probably needed the help more than he did. In other firehouses, some firefighters and paramedics had succumbed to the virus. Catching it was the newest hazard of the job. Frank did him the favor of sending him a few names. At first, Buck figured it wasn’t that important. So, he put it off. </p><p>He focused on being present. In sitting with Chim while they video called Maddie and in jumping in to say hello to Denny, Nia, and Karen and in reading a bedtime story here or there to Christopher when Eddie wasn’t available and even when he was, the two of them sitting in the kitchen or up in Buck’s room, shoulders pressed together. He tried not to watch the news, and he tried not to keep looking at the numbers. </p><p>Pretending wasn’t easy, but after two nights of Eddie catching him up at 3am eyes glued to his phone, Eddie made a point of taking his phone away at night. And then, instead of sleeping down on the first floor, Eddie moved up to the loft on the small camping mat and sleeping bag. </p><p>He and Eddie talked until they drifted off, and sometimes it felt better to not be able to see Eddie and to stare out in the shadowed ceiling. Talking to Eddie made it easier to let go of the day, to not let his mind wander and come up with more of the world’s problems to worry about. </p><p>So, Buck didn’t think about therapy. Not while he had Eddie near him at night keeping him distracted and willing to stay up until late discussing nothing at all. Buck couldn’t imagine Chim or Hen bothering to do that for him. Rarely, it did happen that Eddie was the one wrung out and needing a conversation. He missed Christopher too much or something they’d seen at work had been just a little too close to home. They were there for each other and all of it just worked. </p><p>Of course, that was when Hen decided that it was time she go back home. She missed her kids too much. She missed her wife too much. Eddie didn’t last more than a few days after Hen’s decision as if Hen making that first move made it okay. Buck didn’t blame him, not with the way that Buck missed Christopher which just meant that it was twice as bad for Eddie. And once they were gone and there was just he and Chimney left, Buck found himself falling into old habits. Chimney wasn’t as much of a distraction especially when he spent so much of his time talking to Maddie or reading parenting books, and because Chimney didn’t turn off the news like Eddie or Hen would. </p><p>Being in his room alone at night without anything to keep his mind occupied and missing Eddie’s voice and the way that Buck could calm himself to the sound of his breathing brought Buck to a breaking point. He needed help. </p><p>Dr. Copeland was the second therapist he had a video call with. She was calm and friendly and she didn’t push him to talk. It felt okay to share his concerns with her in a way that he couldn’t say out loud to everyone in his life. Buck didn’t know if it was somehow easier because she was someone that didn’t know him in real life, or if it had something to do with how Buck could tell that she cared and wanted to help, but he found himself opening up. Dr. Copeland didn’t push, but she did give him insight. She made him aware of the ways that he was being unhealthy about the pandemic. </p><p>Chimney picked up at once that Buck was keeping a secret. It took him a little longer to figure out that Buck was talking to someone through a screen and in the same breath to assume that it was some woman that Buck started dating. It did make Buck wonder if people were actually doing that — the whole dating through skype or zoom or facetime. Buck didn’t try to correct him or to be too bothered by Chim teasing him. He didn’t even worry too much once Maddie found out because Maddie wasn’t there in front of him to get the whole thing out of him. So the “covid crush” gave him an excuse to not tell them the truth. Dr. Copeland kept telling him he should tell them how he felt, but Buck didn’t want that burden on his friends and family when the world itself seemed to want to crush them. And either way, he’d been feeling a lot better about everything. He wore his mask and he followed protocols, and he didn’t allow himself to think in “what ifs”. </p><p>Emergencies were his job. He better than most knew the quick turn that things could take for the worse. But as Dr. Copeland reminded him, fear couldn’t rule his life even if there was a lot to be afraid of. And it wasn’t the virus that Buck feared, it was loss. Losing his friends and losing his family and being incapable of changing anything. He was, thus, hyper alert. About the pandemic, and about anything else that might prompt worry. Dr. Copeland thought that too much information could be harmful to his mental health, but for Buck knowing facts and doing research kept him from spiralling. </p><p>It was Dr. Copeland that made the connection to Buck’s past trauma and realized how likely it was that his worry stemmed from that — from the truck falling on his leg and the tsunami and perhaps even more than that, other parts of his life that he retained and that still bothered him on a deep level. She asked him how much he hid away and didn’t deal with — how much he coped with by researching and by using facts against worry. It made Buck think. </p><p>Then, the micro-quakes happened. And Buck got all the alerts, he read up on the dam and he pictured all that could go wrong. </p><p>Worrying didn’t mean panicking for him. Buck was cool under pressure, he was good at his job. Most of the problems came after when he considered what might have happened and also how many hadn’t made it out alive. Not because of the virus. But because of a disaster. But by the end of the day, Chimney had finally moved out and Buck had a new roommate in Albert, and after everything that happened in the day, Buck figured that he maybe needed to take his own advice and realize that he couldn’t let fear hold him back. </p><p>So when his next therapy session came up, he admitted it to Dr. Copeland. Confirmed what she’d been telling him about himself. He hid his true feelings. He hid away behind platitudes and facts and letting things go because it was easier to move forward than to linger and make things weird with his friends and with his family. Examining that fully meant talking about the past and Dr. Copeland, as gentle as she was in letting him lead the conversation, asked the kind of questions that weren’t easy to answer. </p><p>She pressed him about why he feared sharing his feelings and why he felt he had a need to keep so much to himself and Buck was cognizant enough to realize it was his fear of being alone. </p><p>“I just...I don’t think they get it,” Buck said. “I don’t think they see it. At the beginning of this whole thing — the pandemic — they all had someone. My sister is pregnant and she had just moved in with her boyfriend and his brother. Hen has her wife and kids. Bobby has Athena and their kids. Eddie, he has Christopher. And the reason I even have Albert here right now is that he rather not be around my sister and her boyfriend now they’re finally together again. I’m alone. I’m always alone.”</p><p>“But you aren’t,” Dr. Copeland insisted. “You have people. Your team, your sister. Evan, you are not alone. It may feel like you are, but that just isn’t true. I haven’t known you very long, but the way you talk about your team and your sister it is clear you have a support team. That is why I’m encouraging you to speak with them and share your worry and share even this — that you are getting help and looking at things with a new perspective.” </p><p>It was easier to hear it told to him that to do something like admit to Maddie that he was so full of issues that he actually needed therapy. Of course, Maddie herself had gone through a long bout of therapy after Doug and yet compared to that, Buck didn’t feel like he was all that messed up. </p><p>“I get what you’re saying. I do. I just...it doesn’t feel like it. And I don’t want to burden them with more just because I’m feeling left behind or just…”</p><p>“And that brings us back to you hiding your true feelings,” Dr. Copeland said. “Is there even one person you feel comfortable talking to about this. Your sister perhaps.”</p><p>Buck shook his head at once. “No. No. I couldn’t bother Maddie. She has enough on her plate.” </p><p>But his mind went to Eddie. Eddie had noticed he wasn’t doing well. Eddie had moved to sleep on Buck’s floor and then talked to him until he fell asleep. And since going back home to Christopher it wasn’t like Eddie had forgotten about Buck, because when he had the time sometimes he would call Buck and they would talk over the phone and it had brought him back to those nights. At work neither of them brought that up, they just worked as seamlessly as ever. </p><p>“I don’t want to pressure you, Evan. You’re doing so well and admitting and realizing that you’re holding yourself back is an amazing place to be. I just know that you’ll feel even better once you start sharing your feelings or working through them.” </p><p>Dr. Copeland always gave him plenty to think about. And he considered the notion of coming clean to someone — to Eddie — and maybe getting other things off his chest. His fears about the pandemic, the things about his parents that had made them horrible parents to him and Maddie both, how Buck had so many things about himself that he left unacknowledged, and the loneliness. Eddie wasn’t exactly good with emotions either, but he would at least understand the therapy aspect. Eddie had stopped seeing Frank a while ago, but Buck knew that Frank had done what he could to help Eddie and that Eddie had come out the other side lighter and less jaded. </p><p>“I’ll think about it,” Buck said. </p><p>“Good.”</p><p>They talked about other things for the rest of the session and then Buck went back down to join Albert. He’d let Maddie and Chim go, so instead he was busy on his phone. </p><p>“Seriously, dude, how did you meet someone? Now that I’m here, I need to know.” </p><p>Buck rolled his eyes. At times Albert reminded Buck of his younger self, the guy that had been interested in nothing but chasing tail and hoping that that would fill the parts of him that were broken. It hadn’t ever worked, at least not for long. Vividly, he could recall wanting to make connections with those girls and the way that they’d all looked at him like he was asking for far too much. </p><p>“For one thing, I’m not seeing anyone. For another, dating apps are still a thing even if completely inadvisable because we’re in the middle of a pandemic. It might even be good for you to not be hooking up with random girls.”</p><p>Albert just pouted at him and groaned. “I just want this to be over.” </p><p>“So does everyone,” Buck pointed out. </p><p>Albert would probably have made a good choice in finding someone to tell about the therapy. He was a good kid and if Buck asked him to, he wouldn’t go blabbing to everyone else. Not to mention that Albert was a bit removed from it all too in his own way. Still, when Buck opened his mouth to say something, the words didn’t want to come out. </p><p>The next time he was at work and Eddie was walking at his side, Buck turned towards him, and Eddie’s gaze met his. They shared a quick smile. It was easy, a habit. </p><p>“How’s Christopher?” Buck asked.</p><p>“Misses Carla. Misses everyone, really, but after all that time with Carla he got used to having her around all the time.” </p><p>“Doesn’t mean he doesn’t want you around, man,” Buck said. </p><p>Eddie nudged him. “You know, Buck, I didn’t even think about it that way.”</p><p>Buck shrugged at him. Being around Eddie made most of everything else fade away. And when later that day, they were walking from the ladder truck onto a call, Buck just threw a grin his way and Eddie returned it. </p><p>At the end of their shift, Buck walked with Eddie to their cars. </p><p>“Do you remember, before all this, we’d just head over to mine or yours with Christopher. I miss those nights,” Eddie said. </p><p>Buck hadn’t thought about it. He tried not to think about before — about how different life had been back then and how similar because even then he’d done that thing where he pretended that everything was alright. He’d kept it to himself how alone he felt and he’d kept it to himself that sometimes when he and Eddie were sitting in his living room side by side, he wished that it was permanent. It wasn’t about Eddie — or even about Christopher — it was about how Buck longed to have people. Family. </p><p>That had been a thing for a long time. Long before Abby and before he’d moved to California when he’d gone from place to place trying to find himself and trying desperately to belong. The 118 had been one of the first places where he began to feel like he’d found a place, but he’d soon found that it wasn’t enough. It was one thing to love a job and to make it all that he was, but if his time recovering from the ladder truck incident had taught him anything, it was that he needed more outside of the job. It was just that he had no luck finding it. </p><p>“Me too,” Buck said and then before they had reached their cars. “Hey, Eddie, can we talk tonight?” </p><p>Eddie’s face showed some of his surprise. They had never acknowledged it before, not out loud outside of the phone calls or outside of Buck’s bedroom. </p><p>“Sure we can,” Eddie said, crinkles around his eyes forming as he smiled. </p><p>Buck nodded and then he climbed into his Jeep.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Let me know what you all thought.<br/>If you liked it, like/reblog the <a href="https://inawickedlittletown.tumblr.com">tumblr post</a><br/>And if you want, come shout at me on <a href="https://inawickedlittletown.tumblr.com/post/641845683738017792/can-i-be-close-to-you">tumblr</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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